


Such a ‘Nice’ Surprise

by morning_softness



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Drabble, Episode Related, Gen, episode 161 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27975342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morning_softness/pseuds/morning_softness
Summary: Tim insists they take an archives team photograph to commemorate Jon’s surprise birthday party.  Jon secretly treasures it, until he loses it.  He finds it again, after.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker
Comments: 1
Kudos: 38





	Such a ‘Nice’ Surprise

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Lost” by Amanda Palmer:  
> “Nothing’s ever lost forever, it’s just caught inside the cushions of your couch and when you find it you’ll have such a nice surprise.”
> 
> This started as just something fun, almost a character study of what everyone would look like in a group photo. (Tag yourself, I’m Jon and my father is Sasha.) Then I got thinking about this great comic by https://fabaesuaves.tumblr.com/ where there are Polaroids of Sasha that Tim and Melanie find, and this fic by voiceless_terror where there’s a photo of Sasha and Jon finds it, and I thought, ‘okay, but what if there was a Polaroid and they _didn’t_ find it?’

“Jon, you have to look at the camera!” Rosie scolds, peering through the viewfinder of her old Polaroid.

He rolls his eyes. “I _am_ looking at the camera!” 

“No, you’re looking off somewhere way to the left! And you, Tim, stop making faces! Really the whole lot of you are ridiculous! Ah, barring you of course, Mr. Bouchard.”

Jon huffs. “The camera is within my range of vision,” he argues. “I can clearly see your antique monstrosity of a camera. Ergo, I am _looking_ at the camera.”

Martin suddenly becomes concerned that he might not be looking at the camera properly either. He focuses on the green light on the top, near the flash, staring at it intently even as he feels Tim shift position beside him.

When the photo comes out, Jon is gazing off at the left corner, a slightly peevish expression on his face. Tim is grinning widely, looking straight at the camera, even as he contorts his body ridiculously to simultaneously make bunny ears behind both Jon and Martin. Martin is staring at the camera with the solemn intensity of a mugshot. His smile has slipped from his face, replaced with a look of concentration so forceful it’s unnerving. Elias’s smile looks smug, as though he knows something you don’t, and it’s difficult to tell where he is looking. Some trick of the photograph seems to have given his eyes that effect which makes them appear to be following you. Only Sasha, in the middle of the group, is as perfectly posed and smiling as a stock-photo model.

“I swear, Sasha, you look the same in every photo,” Tim says, shaking his head in exaggerated disbelief. “We could replace you with a cardboard cutout and no one would notice.”

Sasha shoves him. “That’s not funny, Tim!”, she says, “You know I’m irreplaceable!”, but she’s laughing. She tries to insist they take another, serious, photograph but Rosie says that, as the receptionist, _she_ actually has work to do. She goes away tutting quietly about departments where people can drink wine in the workplace at 11 in the morning.

Jon shakes his head over the poor quality of the photograph and declares the whole party a waste of time, but the next day when Martin comes in with a mug of tea for him he finds it sitting in a small frame on Jon’s desk.

***

The photograph stays there on Jon’s desk until Prentis’s worm invasion, when it falls off during Jon’s scramble out of his office. He assumes it to have been destroyed in the chaos. Jon misses it at first, and then he misses it more, later. 

***

He finds it again, after. 

It had been packed among the tapes that were sent to the cabin. Jon wonders if Jonah had taken it from the office after Prentis just to give more cover for the thing that was not Sasha, or if he had saved it with this specific moment in mind, one more layer of salt to pour on the wound.

He doesn’t want to _Know._


End file.
